This paper presents an intonation model which determines intonation contours over intonation phrases. The model is described by four elements: communicative type of an intonation phrase; number of accent groups in it; position of the nuclear accent group in it; and set of target intonation points. Individualization of the model is based on semiautomatic analysis of speaker database. The model w...

The temporal organization of discourse has produced a great deal of works in several languages pointing to different aims: from studies where the identification of cues about the planning of linguistic message is treated to studies in which duration models for text-to-speech systems are proposed. This work is a first step towards the description of Catalan vowel duration. Considering the Catala...

This paper describes a new generic text-to-speech synthesis system, developed in the scope of the Tecnovoz Project. Although it was primarily targeted at speech synthesis in European Portuguese, its modular architecture and flexible components allows its use for different languages. We also provide a survey on the development of the language resources needed by the TTS.

Processing spontaneous speech deals with problems that are influenced by the several facts. This paper reports an investigation of the production of real and non-words in two normal speaker groups. Group 1 consists of 10 young people 5 women and 5 men (mean age 23 years) and group 2 consists of 5 older women and 5 older men(mean age 52 years). The speech material used in study consisted of two ...

Human subjects are known to adapt their motor behavior to a shift of the visual field brought about by wearing prism glasses over their eyes. We have studied the analog of this effect in speech. U sing a device that can feed back transformed speech signals in real time, we exposed subjects to alterations of their own speech feedback. We found that speakers learn to adjust their production of a ...

This paper describes work in progress concerning the adequate modeling of fast speech in unit selection speech synthesis systems, mostly having in mind blind and visually impaired users. Initially, a survey of the main characteristics of fast speech will be given. Subsequently, strategies for fast speech production will be discussed. Certain requirements concerning the ability of a speaker of a...

(Please refer to Appendix for easy reading.)

We introduce a method of generating grain parameters of a granular synthesiser in real-time by using a network of artificial spiking neurons, the behaviour of which is determined by user-control of a small number of network parameters; ‘Neurogranular synthesis’. The artificial network can exhibit a wide variety of behaviour from loosely correlated to highly synchronised, which can produce inter...